Let’s get this medical waste *transported*

So I’m cruising around Santa Rosa the other day, picking up cat food and groceries and whatnot, and I see this truck for a medical waste transportation business. I snapped a photo for you while I was at a stoplight:

This made me reflect on how we self-employed service/knowledge workers describe our businesses.

We often start by describing our skills. In fact, that might be all some of us do: talk about our skills, our tool/technology preferences, and our previous experience.

I suspect we do this partly because HR departments have trained us to. Here’s the job description for a medical waste transportation driver:

The output those customers want is medical waste removed with no snafus, high reliability, and (probably) low cost. That’s a very different marketing message compared to a bullet list of skills.

That’s why all the marketing language you’ll see on the truck pictured above is about results. Really, it can be boiled down to the three words printed above the truck’s license plate: medical waste transportation.

It clearly specifies what this company will do for you. There’s no differentiation from other companies, but that’s a different issue.

If you’re stuck talking about your business in terms of your skills, it will eventually limit your profitability because you’ll either be making yourself identical to hundreds of thousands of other companies (commoditization), or you’ll be jumping from skillset to skillset in search of better rates (an exhausting proposition that’s no way to build a strong business).

The solution is simple: talk about the results of what you do in terms your ideal client understands and relates to. You can’t do that without choosing a target market to focus on.

All the $350 seats are sold, and there are currently 10 $500 seats left.

If you’re on the fence about it, hit REPLY and let me know what you’re thinking. I’ll help you decide if it’s a great fit for where you are now in your business and you can decide if the timing is right.